Listen to an exclusive stream of Matana Roberts's new album
Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile. Roberts is
on the cover of The Wire
356, interviewed by Daniel Spicer.

Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile is the
second instalment in Roberts's projected 12 part Coin Coin
series of albums, using the language of acoustic jazz to look at
ideas of race, class and gender politics in American society.

Daniel Spicer writes: "Coin Coin was the nickname of a totemic
figure from African-American history, Marie Thérèse Metoyer – a
freed slave who founded a community along the Cane River in
Louisiana in the late 18th century where people of colour enjoyed
greater freedoms and opportunities than they could in most other
places in the South. “She was a big part of my family lore,” says
Matana Roberts. “My grandfather and his brother were orphans, and
they were raised by a collective of different families who lived in
that area that were actually blood-related to her. She was the
first strong female archetype, outside of my mother and my
grandmother, that I was exposed to in a storytelling format – I
learned about her before I learned about Harriet Tubman. And my
grandfather used to call me Coin Coin for fun.”

Coin CoinChapter One: Gens De Couleur Libres
and Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile are out now on
Constellation.